On Media

The American Prospect needs no angels

By DYLAN BYERS

06/05/2012 03:51 PM EDT

GQ's Marin Cogan reports today on the fate of The American Prospect, which recently told readers that if it couldn't raise $200,000, it was going to die.

It's not a terribly pretty picture: "On a recent Monday afternoon, most of the offices on the lower level of the Prospect's loft were empty," Cogan writes. "The halls, lined with boxes of magazine archives and framed cover stories, were quiet. Upstairs, where the young staffers share offices, there are no outward signs the magazine could soon close. ... The writers are still pressing forward with their pieces for the next issue — but they differ on how intensely they're working on finding new jobs."

The Prospect raised the $200,000, but as I noted last week, there's little evidence that the money they've raised ($900,000 in total) is anything other than a minor Band-Aid on a major crack in the ship's hull.

In an email over the weekend, The Prospect's publisher, Jay Harris, took issue with that characterization. "It's not as though [editor] Kit Rachlis and I haven't given thought to the answers for the Prospect, and certainly there are some obvious examples of non-profit media businesses that are financially stable and successful," he wrote.

Reached by phone today, Harris acknowledged that there is ample reason for skepticism and even admitted that Cogan's piece "definitely captures the classic fatalistic/altruistic/journalistic vibe of the Prospect right now." But he insisted that there was still ample room for the nonprofit publishing model, contrasting the American Prospect's strategy with that of The New Republic, which recently came under the ownership of the wealthy, 28-year-old tech entrepreneur Chris Hughes.

"I remain convinced that there is a model to the Prospect that is viable without having a deep-pocketed angel," he said, referring to Hughes.

Harris was the publisher of Mother Jones, also a nonprofit, for almost two decades before leaving in 2009; he joined the Prospect at the beginning of this year.

But though Harris believes that Mother Jones and The Nation provide models of successful nonprofit publishing — he cites subscription and retail sales, advertising revenue, readership support and foundation support as the four pillars of that model — he does not seem to have a concrete plan to avoid future fundraising efforts.

"We will go back to readers and ask for their support," he admitted. "I certainly don't anticipate doing the 'Give us money or we'll die campaign.' I don't want to do that again. We need to be confident enough to say that we can stay out of the death march."

Avoiding the death march means cutting back on expenses and maybe charging more for subscriptions. Harris even cites Foreign Affairs, which charges $33 a year for six issues, as a model. "The idea that you can command $30-35 bucks for a subscription, that's a pretty significant contribution to total cost of operating — that doesn't seem like a stretch to me," he said.

So perhaps the Prospect can find ways to stay afloat without sounding its own death-knell to readers. Perhaps that is just the fate of most, if not all, nonprofit magazines. But it's fair to say that there's a lot more excitement — and hope — for the magazines that do have deep-pocketed angels.

"I think there's room for skepticisim," Harris admitted. "It is a hyper competitive world. And maybe this is an article of faith."